the primary selling points being enhanced sexual gratification for the women and aesthetically pleasing results. Starting at $4,500, a woman can have a labioplasty, in which her inner labia are cut and reshaped if she thinks they’re too large or asymmetrical. Or a woman can become “revirginized” and have an approximation of her hymen restored.

Well, when you look at the reimbursement patterns, this is no surprise:

“Typically, people will spend between $300 and $1,000 for a Botox treatment,” says Resneck, all of which is paid for by the patient (given it’s for cosmetic reasons), usually at the time of service. By comparison, a skin checkup might net a dermatologist an eventual insurance payment of anywhere from $30 to $100.

Long wait times have become customary for dermatology practices over the last few years, but now even patients with urgent problems complain they are being told to take a number and stand in line.

So a pair of California researchers decided to put these complaints to the test. Posing as patients concerned about a “changing mole” (aka skin cancer central), they called 851 dermatologists across the country to make appointments and reported the results in a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The average wait time given them was 38 days, with doctors’ offices in some cities taking much longer: 47 days in Syracuse, N.Y., 48 days in Phoenix and a whopping 73 days in Boston.